fergusarnold

Apple has released the long awaited iPhone 5. The phone, which spurred thousands across North America to form queues outside Apple Outlets, has shown incremental changes over the previous 4s. To compare Apple with its competitors, one may turn to Samsung, who has jammed their foot in the smartphone market with their new, snazzier, Galaxy S3. The competition for Apple can also be quantified over the past two years by the 42% increase in the smartphone sales for the Android operating system when compared to the 16% increase for Apple. Apples phone’s are responsible for approximately half of their revenue and is worth protecting. Its quite apparent that if Apple were to hope to stay a leader in the market, their product line must improve at a rate at least par with that of its competitors; the iPhone 5 has fallen short of doing so. I’m interested to see how Apple’s popularity weather this storm.

the latest and greatest?

web references: http://www.economist.com/node/21562939

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c451a7c0-07d2-11e2-9df2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz27iDDMLsl

American rapper, Dr Dre, has creatively pushed the limits of marketing with the help of extensively exposed Olympians. The entrepreneur and founder of the popular “Dre Beats” line of headphones has highlighted the vague line between property and sponsorship at events such as the Olympics. The brand, although not an official sponsor for the London olympic games, sent the GB Olympic team a set of headphones emblazoned with the national colours. The issue raised by doing so is the infringement of the global rights paid in full by the 11 international companies at a price tag near 100 million dollars each. Superstar athletes such as Michael Phelps and Lebron James have brought much attention to the brand under the Olympic spotlight. The marketing ambush has cought the International Olympic Comittee by surprise, and has forced them to jump into the now seemingly foggy area of sponsorship. It would appear that the very expensive rights paid by for by the sponsors are now very hard to keep exclusive: “There is a difference between someone using equipment with a logo and someone promoting the brand.”- IOC spokesman Mark Adams. The stunt has gone on to promote other large companies to do the same and capatalize on the questionable ability of the IOC to control the difference between sponsorships and possession.

web references: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/31/dr-dre-beats-olympic-brand-police

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/03/entertainment-us-oly-marketing-headphone-idUSBRE87211B20120803

A case study which I found to relate business and ethics quite well is the poor labour conditions in many shoe factories across Asia. A large company under heavy fire for this issue is Nike. In many of Nike’s factories, employees have reported to be verbally and physically abused as “punishment” for poor yield, quality, etc. An internal report released by the Associated Press showed that nearly two thirds of all Nike factories in Indonesia do not reach Nike’s standards; twelve of the 168 factories in Indonesia were reported as to be in the “most serious” category, where employees are expected to work illegally long hours at a wages well below the national average. At what point, for the employee, do the “cons” of working for Nike outweigh the “pros”? Employing approximately 115,000 individuals in Indonesia, Nike provides a great contribution to the national economy. With that said, is it ethically right to employ an individual in a third-world country, and force that employee into far from ideal working conditions in attempt to lower the cost of a shoe? Even if the employment opportunity will not only aid the employee himself, but also his or her countries economic strength? The obvious difference in labour standards fades the line between what is ethically right and wrong.

Factory illustration: http://zero-drop.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/217540431VTBjsL_fs.jpg

web reference pages: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/sep2011/nike-s08.shtml

http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/121790850350380.xml&coll=7

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